Praeteritus
by Lizzosaurus
Summary: Poland returns to a forgotten place in the midst of war-torn Europe


"There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation."

Logan P. Smith

The man returned today.

After one hundred and fifty years.

He was alone, and looked quite strange without his partner, the tall one with the brown hair that had also lived within these walls.

He was weary, too. I could tell by the way his shoulders slumped, and the way he glanced about the rooms in a senseless daze, running a blackened hand through his matted, too-short flaxen hair.

He shuffled about in a pattern similar to the lost animals and wildlife that now graced my halls and served my only company, quietly, aimlessly. Had I the voice to ask why he had returned, he would not have had an answer, for he clearly did not know himself.

His eyes were that of a haunted man's, having seen far too much pain and far too much destruction to regain the youthful, feral light they had once held.

The lavish tunics and surcoats that the tall man had sewn for him had been traded for the same modern clothes that were worn by the occasional wanderers as they lingered about, inspecting my painted doors and tramping about in mischief and seclusion.

On his arm he wore a dirtied white and red armband, upon which the letters "WP" were stamped in faded black print.  
His feet were clad in leather shoes that had been wrapped with strips of cloth to extend their suitability. The heel of one shoe traced idly, smearing about the blood that was dripping onto my rotten floorboards, which were now stripped bare of the woven rugs that had covered them for so long.

I was in disrepair, for the last dwellers of the home had been the two men. My doors had been broken to thieves, of course, and even the occasional cluster of foreign foot soldiers who spoke in strange tongues, but no one had stayed long enough to kindle flames in my fireplace, or sweep the gathering debris with the tall man's decayed willow broom.

The glass of my windows had been shattered, and discoloured rags were all that remained of the delicately embroidered curtains that had been given to the pair by an array of coquettish maidens.

The man ran his fingers over the broken ledge in the kitchen, and I could nearly see the two of them, bickering over who would take claim of the final pastry cooling on the sill, or dancing like madmen around the hearth after drinking too much mead.

He must have been thinking quite deeply, or perhaps not at all, for he began muttering indistinct words under his breath.

Names.

The Polish names of several men and women. A handful of Lithuanian names, too, one of which sounding more familiar than the rest.

Tolvydas.

He began to grow distraught, clawing at his lice-ridden jacket and pacing frenetically.

"No."

The single word rasped, clear and well-defined, from his throat as he walked up the stairs into the lofty bedroom that he and the tall man had been sharing since the very day they had raised my walls and thatched my roof.

"No."

Louder this time, he stared at the ceiling, which had collapsed decades ago, spilling the remains of the once well-tended attic into the room. His dull eyes began to smoulder with a feverish realisation.

"No."

His cries suddenly became like the wail of a child as his breathing hitched, and he stooped to pick up a broken sword from a pile of rubble with trembling fingers.

Then he collapsed onto the floor, clutching the rusted thing to his chest. Wresting the blade away from the moth-bitten sheath, he must have found what he was seeking, for his face suddenly twisted into one of wretched torment, jaws gaping silently before finding a voice.

"No!"

The heart-wrenching sound elongated into a horrifying screech of agony.

He screamed until his breath left his lungs, then he took in a shuddering gasp and screamed again.

The onslaught of grief-stricken cries soaked into the beams of the walls, and I vibrated with the sound.

He screamed and screamed and screamed.

Tears slipped down his cheeks, leaving stains in the grimy wood of the floorboards.

I had never seen him cry.

And oh, how he wept.

His body heaved violently as frightening sobs strangled him, and he doubled into himself.

The man lamented over his unspoken grievances until well after dusk, eventually stirred by something within his tortured mind to stand and rummage aimlessly about in my dismantled kitchen cupboards.

Then he slept.

The next morning, they took him away.

He offered little resistance to the strangers he had clearly been escaping, for he was so tired.

The man, to my knowledge, had never turned aside a fight. Even arguing with his tall friend over trivial matters suggested that they would soon be wrestling on the floor.

He only had time to place a well-aimed kick in between one man's legs before he was restrained with swift, unwieldy efficiency.

As abruptly as he had arrived, he was gone.

Leaving me alone with the ivy that crept along my crumbling walls and the wildflowers that spilled through my rotten floorboards.

* * *

No one can take my alternate perspective away from me !


End file.
